Well, I did some searching last night on cameras. Looks like the term “Camedia” doesn’t show up on the latest Olympus cameras, but I think I’ve found the one that I want. newegg.com is selling it for $209 and free shipping. Then I can search around for xD cards for the best buy on the higher capacity versions. It is the Olympus D560, 3.2MPixels, 3x optical and has USB out. The biggest complaint users have had about it is the battery life. But it does take AA, which is nice, and you can get rechargeable AAs (which I have). Unless someone posts to this LJ post bitching about newegg or the Olympus D560, I might order it tonight or at least by tomorrow. And hopefully it’ll be here before the Galley convention. 🙂

While typing that, I was eating a banana that had (for me) sat too long. So that got me thinking it’s Poll Time!

In my family, there’s a nice spectrum of banana lovers. I’m of the “still a bit green” variety, mom likes yellow but doesn’t mind a bit of brown, and dad fights the fruit flies off when eating his. And when he can’t eat ’em? It’s time for banana bread! Yum!

Well, I filed my taxes tonight. Getting money back from the Feds & the State and, surprise surprise, even the school district (all of $2 on that one). Most of that money will be going to help pay for my roof (currently sitting on a 0% interest credit card) but I’ve also decided to join the 21st century and will spend some of it on a digital camera. Woohoo!

I’ve decided that I’m going to get myself an Olympus Camedia, but not which one yet. It needs optical zoom and USB but as for megapixels, I’ll probably stick with 3 and under. Unless I find a bargain in one that’s higher. Hoping to spend ~$250-300 including memory card(s).

You may ask yourself why an Olympus Camedia – but you probably don’t know the answer to that. So I’ll tell you instead. My folks have one of the 2 megapixel ones and I used it during the Disney trip. It’s a nice camera and did what I needed (most of the time – the rest of the time it’s cuz I didn’t know what I was doing with it). judiang and elsaf both have slightly higher “editions” of the 2 megapixel one my folks have, and they also did a fabulous job. Thus, I’m going to stick with what I know. (The only other digital camera I ever considered was a Nikon Coolpix, but that’s cuz I know how nice Nikon is, growing up in a household with a professional photographer and his Leica and Nikon collections.)

Oh, and as for the icon that I’m using for this entry – it’s thanks to theta_g that I have it. He recently watched The Three Kinds of Heat and felt compelled to make me some icons. The other one was of Major Shan saying “Freeze, Mama F*cker” (but without the asterisk). As fun as that icon is, it’s not Sylv (or Leo) so I won’t be using it. I’ll need to make a decent capture of Shan just for Thete so he can make himself one. 🙂 Thanks for the icons, Thete!

Not getting a lot of snow today (alas) but we got plenty of ice this morning. At 6am, I got a phone call saying we were on a 2 hour delay. Around 8am, I got the second one telling me school was canceled. Worked for me. I was already up by then, but I’ve been alternately goofing off and cleaning the house/doing laundry, so it’s been a good day.

paygem had an interview meme in her LJ that intrigued me, so I asked her for some interview questions myself. Here are the details, her questions, and my answers.

THE RULES (so I’m told)
1 – Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2 – I will respond; I’ll ask you five questions.
3 – You’ll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4 – You’ll include this explanation.
5 – You’ll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

paygem asks:

1. What is the most important scientific fact (in your opinion of course) and why?

The most important scientific fact is that scientists are human too. When scientists continually challenge each other and test other scientists’ results, we end up learning more about the world. People make mistakes, even the most brilliant scientists do, and since science encourages skepticism (instead of fearing it), the mistakes are eventually discovered and refuted. Then progress can commence.

2. Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, and Mark Strickson… (pick a different one for each). One you get to go to dinner with at some famous restaurant. One you get to interview for an entertainment news program on national television. One you get to invite over for Scrabble. (and why, of course).

I’d go to dinner with Mark because he’s got a million stories to tell about his producing animal documentaries, and he’d be fun to listen to. I’d interview McGann (though on national TV? eek!) so that I could be the envy of one Miss Judith A Grant, Esq. And I’d play Sylv at Scrabble because I’m sure I could beat him. 😉

3. (stealing a question from the list I gave Tim) if you won a TARDIS for a day, how would you use and it and who would you take with, pick up, or go and visit?

I’d use it to go to the future just to see if we ever do get all the neat gizmos that I read about in science fiction and to see if we ever do get to explore other worlds and meet other alien species. To find the answers to things I’m never gonna find out in my lifetime. Would I take anyone with me? Since the TARDIS is infinite, I’d take as many friends and relatives as wanted to come. If I was limited to one person, I’d probably take Dad, who encouraged my love of sci fi and deserves to see the future as much as I do.

4. What is your favorite holiday of the year and why?

Christmas! Presents! (Well, and family and snow and friends and presents and the music and the kitschy TV movies and presents and stuff like that.)

5. If you could be a character out of any book, who would it be?

When I was a kid I wanted to be Willy Wonka (or Charlie Bucket). I think I’d still like to be Willy Wonka. 🙂 He’s got the coolest place to live – and he’s got Oompa Loompas!

Last night, as I was headed for bed, I decided to check out the current school cancellations on channel 2. I managed to get there at the start of the alphabet, so I saw Covington (the school to the direct north of us) early on, and a bit later Milton Union (the school just south of us). Sure enough, when the N’s showed, Newton was there. So I headed back online to chat with the girls. And minutes after that, I got the phone call letting me know that school was canceled. How nice. 🙂

Actually, in just looking outside but not actually going outside (yet), it looks like we may have missed out on the freezing rain. That would be nice if that were the case. Either mom or dad (I’m thinking dad, myself) had to shovel a little to help mom get her car out of my garage. (Their garage door is broken again, so mom uses my garage when she needs to go to work in the morning that bad weather’s been promised.) Once I get a move on, I’ll shovel my walk (and maybe dad’s, if his isn’t done yet).

Since I’ve got some time, I’ll answer two more questions which have been asked of me. You can still ask me a question, any question. Just click here. So far, none have been of the variety that I’d prefer not to answer (except Judi’s, but I handled that one pretty well).

kalibex: There are many things, actually. For one thing, I can speak English and he can’t. The whole opposable thumb thing seems to allude him, but I’ve mastered it since I before my first birthday. I can turn the bathroom faucet on and off – he can only turn it off (but he rarely tries). Ditto the bathroom lights. He betters me in few areas – the whole hiding under the bed and running quickly from room to room, plus the fact that he can jump more than twice his height would seem to be it.

drake57: Well, I went to google and here was the first entry: http://www.io.com/~arcangel/. So I guess she would be it!

bob01: Who do you think you are? Mr Morden????

After complaining to friends that I’d only gotten one question so far, I managed to get 2 more. So, here we go:

capriuni: Well, what sort of answer are you looking for?

elsaf: Well, they’re good for telling different components apart, even when said components have the same IP address. Watch out for components manufactured by fly-by-night companies because sometimes they reuse the same ones over and over. Not good.

Oh, and in the weather department, we’ve got snow – woohoo! Supposed to turn icy & shitty by the morning, which might mean a snow day. That would be nice. 🙂 (Well, the ice isn’t nice, but snow days are!)

Oh, be sure to ask your questions here!

judiang: Well, only at Monopoly. Then again, we don’t compete against each other a lot. He beats the hell out of me at “go fetch” because I’m just too lazy to chase after toys.

Be sure to ask your own questions here. I’ll answer as I get ’em! Oh, and if you think you can figure out what the original question is, reply to the LJ post and I may let you know if you were right or not. 🙂

Now that the hubbub has died down on the “ask me a question, any question” poll that was going around in LJ, I decided I’d try one myself. Since my first poll was a success (heh), I’ll do this one. So, as the thing says below, ask me a question, any question. I intend to answer them. (Whether my answer will actually answer the question asked is another matter….) What’s the interesting thing to do when reading the answers, I think, is to try and figure out just what was the original question. (Being a teacher, I try to get my students to answer questions using complete sentences, so that the reader knows what the question originally was. I am not going to do that here, however.)

Actually, no, the Queen didn’t make it to my dream (don’t think she ever has and, hell, I’ve even dreamed G.I. Joe cartoons), but I like that Pet Shop Boys song.

Yesterday (when I was mad… Oh wait, shush about PSB, trina!) morning, I was going to write about the dream I’d had the night before, but I don’t have a lot of time in the morning, especially when I hit the snooze button 4 times. So all I could do was read my e-mail and Friends’ LJ entries and then get ready for work. So I’ll try to remember some of the odder bits.

The dream takes place at Newton (as so many of my dreams seem to) but this one wasn’t a teaching anxiety dream. It turns out Newton was playing host to a convention. Not a sci-fi convention. Indeed, I’m not entirely sure what the people who were there had in common. I remember watching Emeril Lagasse on stage in our auditorium. Of course, in the dream, there’s no gym floor in the auditorium and the room itself is about 10 times bigger. So Emeril was just a spec on the stage from where I was sitting.

The girls (elsaf and judiang) were staying with me in order to participate in the convention, and we had a room in the school which was across from my classroom. (There is no room across from my classroom in real life, unless you want to count the girl’s restroom.) One of the PMEBers (don’t remember who, only that she was a PMEBer), who I guess was also at the convention, brought us a giant “M”, McDonald’s style, that she’d made out of paper. We were to hang it over our room door because, in honor of Emeril being there, we were going to be serving food out of our room.

The second night of the convention was supposed to have Bill Bailey performing (woohoo!) and I had intended to show the girls Black Books (one of my favorite modern British TV comedies — it has Bill Bailey as a regular). The trouble was, in addition to staying at the school, I was also staying at my parents’ house (as you do in dreams) and my multi-region DVD player was at my house. So I needed to get the girls next door in order to show them the series. Things were complicated, however, by Granny staying over at my parents’ house (in their bedroom, no less). Can’t remember exactly *how* she complicated things, however.

Well, alas, I woke up before we could watch Black Books or see Bill Bailey. That’s a real shame because given the two performers, I’d much rather see Bill Bailey on stage than Emeril. (Can’t stand his shows – give me Alton Brown or Kathleen Daelemans any day!)

Now, I can see the reasons behind a number of the dream elements. The convention has to do with Gallifrey One which is coming up. The girls were there cuz I often dream of the girls and we love going to conventions and other things together. We’re FoodTV regulars, so that sort of explains Emeril (but not completely, as we never watch him together. Iron Chef, yes. Alton Brown, yes.) The McDonald’s sign came from an article that gregmce posted in his LJ the other day. Newton School appeared because, as I mentioned earlier, it often stars in my dreams. Granny was there – well, probably just me being guilty that I haven’t gone to see Granny lately. Maybe I can rectify that this weekend. Bill Bailey & Black Books? Well, I like ’em both, but haven’t really thought about them much lately. So not sure why they showed up.

Dreams are strange, eh? But they can be very entertaining. “But that’s OK because I’ve got my spatula!” (Wonder if anyone gets the quote? Amy will, of course…)

Today’s Friday – woohoo! And it was a good day. After work, I met up with several co-workers at BW3s (Buffalo Wild Wings and Weck – an Ohio-originated chain). It’s become a Friday tradition – usually BeeDubs (as we call it) but sometimes Applebee’s or High Marks (a local restaurant/bar). We go, we chat, many drink (not I – I’m there for the conversation & the food), and we all have a blast.

Tonight was no exception. I really enjoy my co-workers. I think our school is lucky to have such a fabulous staff of hard workers who also know how to have fun. Heck, we’re such a lovable bunch that folks who’ve since left our staff still join us on Fridays from time to time. Tonight, for example, the principal who hired me was there, as was his former secretary. Spouses and S/Os are allowed as well, since 2 of the regulars have both spouses as members of the Newton staff. The discussion is always lively and the food isn’t half bad either.

On the way to BW’s I had to drive through the first real snow of the season (leaving out that early one from November – it doesn’t count). There was just a dusting on the ground when I parked in the lot, but by the time I left my friends, the car (and everything else) had half an inch of snow on it. And cuz there’s a few nice curvy roads on the way home, plus lots of drifting areas, I drove back at an average speed of about 30mph. (I took Washington, the curviest of the roads, at less than 20mph, and noticed the other few cars on it were going as slow.) But I got home safe & sound and got to wear my snow boots in actual snow. Woohoo!

In other news, I did my preliminary tax review (I’m sorry, but I love doing my taxes on TurboTax and get them in as soon as I can) since we got our W-2s today. Looks like I’m getting a boatload of money back from the feds this year. Yay! (Well, boo! They’ve had my money all this time and never gave me any interest, the cads!) Will get some back from the state as well. Ought to help pay off my roof debt – yay!

Tomorrow I have a fellow coming over to give me an estimate on painting the exterior of my house & garage. That’s a job that needs doing this summer. Actually, it’s more of a stain than a paint (or it should be). The group that’s doing the estimate is a group of college students who paint houses to help pay for school. Sounds like a good deal to me. Hopefully I can afford their prices.

And also tomorrow, at 10:30am, is my appointment at Curves. Mom and I shall be braving the snow covered roads to attend. It’ll be interesting to hear what my measurements are. If you wondering how the Project is going, I can tell you that, thus far, I haven’t lost anything. BUT, and this is important, I haven’t gained anything yet either. 🙂